Bunches of things you didn't know about the Corsair

flusher · Mar 1, 2019

k0ua said:
I had no idea the British carrier fleet made a significant contribution in the Pacific. In fact I didn't know there was a British carrier fleet in the Pacific, and I sure as heck didn't know they were mostly flying Corsairs.

It was the Brits who figured out how to land the Corsair on a carrier deck after the USN gave up on it. The long nose and big engine made it difficult to see the deck. The Brits crabbed the plane on the final approach and then straightened it out just before touchdown. A lot of Corsairs in the Pacific operated off the ground strips (e.g. The Black Sheep Squadron).

2LaneCruzer · Mar 1, 2019

flusher said:
It was the Brits who figured out how to land the Corsair on a carrier deck after the USN gave up on it. The long nose and big engine made it difficult to see the deck. The Brits crabbed the plane on the final approach and then straightened it out just before touchdown. A lot of Corsairs in the Pacific operated off the ground strips (e.g. The Black Sheep Squadron).

The book "Baa Baa Black Sheep" by Pappy Boyington is a good book; I also read it many years ago. He told the story of a young pilot who over revved his engine on the ground and flipping the plane from the torque. I believe he started out with the Flying Tigers flying P-40's.

Industrial Toys · Mar 1, 2019

Sounds like the task just required a stiff upper lip.

Is that, the aircraft in the popular footage of a bad carrier landing where the plane splits in two, spins around and you just see the plane hacked off behind the pilots seat?

2LaneCruzer · Mar 1, 2019

Industrial Toys said:
Sounds like the task just required a stiff upper lip.

Is that, the aircraft in the popular footage of a bad carrier landing where the plane splits in two, spins around and you just see the plane hacked off behind the pilots seat?

I think that was a Hellcat.

YouTube

JamesHW · Mar 4, 2019

Worked as manager of a warehouse, really an old shed, and one day was hanging out at door at the end of the day and across the alley a guy was smoking a cigarette and we struck up a convo and he invited me over for a drink. Turned out it was his photography studio and he also bunked there. Commented on a photo he had up looking down at a carrier deck and a landing signal officer looking upset. Turned out it was his carrier and the picture (not taken by him) was from when a fellow pilot was killed attempting to land his Corsair. Great guy and he became my best friend until he died of pancreatic cancer many years later. Had many great stories of his life growing up and the war. I think he mentioned he had 5 kills of enemy planes.

2LaneCruzer · Mar 4, 2019

JamesHW said:
Worked as manager of a warehouse, really an old shed, and one day was hanging out at door at the end of the day and across the alley a guy was smoking a cigarette and we struck up a convo and he invited me over for a drink. Turned out it was his photography studio and he also bunked there. Commented on a photo he had up looking down at a carrier deck and a landing signal officer looking upset. Turned out it was his carrier and the picture (not taken by him) was from when a fellow pilot was killed attempting to land his Corsair. Great guy and he became my best friend until he died of pancreatic cancer many years later. Had many great stories of his life growing up and the war. I think he mentioned he had 5 kills of enemy planes.

Those first hand stories are wonderful. I met an older guy at a car show many years ago; we got to talking and he eventually told me that he flew Wildcats off a carrier during WWII. Wildcats were produced and used throughout the war on some of the smaller carriers. He was telling me that they had a retractable landing gear, but it was hand cranked! He even knew how many cranks it took. I told him I had great admiration for him and his fellow pilots; his remarks was something like "Oh, he77...I was only 22 years old, and none of us ever expected to go back home alive any way."

Diggin It · Mar 4, 2019

To me, there's a big difference between the guys that don't talk about it until you get to know them a bit, and the guys that brag about it, openly wear hats/insignia, use their rank after their name, etc.

ArlyA · Mar 4, 2019

I'm afraid the Grumman F6F Hellcat was not around for the whole war...

History of the HellCat's... The F6F made its combat debut in September 1943, and was best known for its role as a rugged, well-designed carrier fighter, which was able to outperform the A6M Zero and help secure air superiority over the Pacific theater. A total of 12,275 was built in just over 2 years.
Role: Carrier-based fighter aircraft
Manufacturer: Grumman
First flight: 26 June 1942
Introduction: 1943

MossRoad · Mar 4, 2019

ArlyA said:
I'm afraid the Grumman F6F Hellcat was not around for the whole war...

History of the HellCat's... The F6F made its combat debut in September 1943, and was best known for its role as a rugged, well-designed carrier fighter, which was able to outperform the A6M Zero and help secure air superiority over the Pacific theater. A total of 12,275 was built in just over 2 years.
Role: Carrier-based fighter aircraft
Manufacturer: Grumman
First flight: 26 June 1942
Introduction: 1943

To put that number of Hellcats into perspective....

There were about 300,000 military aircraft produced for the U.S. in WWII. About 99,000 of those were fighters.

A tad over 12,000 were just Hellcats.

Today, the U.S. military has a TOTAL of a tad over 13,000 aircraft of all types.

Those numbers are mind boggling.